Shropshire tenders for EPR

Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust has gone out to tender for an electronic patient record system worth up to £3m.

The trust is using a variety of patient administration systems, including CSC’s iPM, which it received under NPfIT. It also uses SEMA Helix PAS for its community hospitals and several smaller systems for specialist services.

Shropshire is now looking to procure a full EPR in a five year contract worth up to £3m.

The trust’s head of informatics, Andrew Crookes, told EHI that it wants to create a “holistic view” of patients throughout its clinical services with the ability to record and share clinical records created at the point of contact.

“This will enable the trust to share appropriate clinical information with partner organisations, which will contribute to the best possible patient care and most effective use of resources,” he said.

The tender says Shropshire is looking for a full EPR, including a patient administration system, document management, voice recognition and a nursing information system.

“The solution must be capable of supporting the delivery of care across multiple care settings including integration and interoperability with existing and future trust systems,” it says.

The community trust, which was formed in 2011 from a merger of the provider arms of two primary care trusts, also wants a system which will support patient access to records.

Crookes added that the trust’s current IT systems do not support mobile working and it requires a mobile disconnected working functionality in the new EPR.

“Primarily because of the poor mobile telecommunications infrastructure in rural areas of the UK like Shropshire; the nurses and therapists working in people’s homes need to be able to record the relevant information, store it on a mobile device and then have it automatically update and synchronise with the EPR once the member of staff has a mobile signal or is at a location where we have provided appropriate facilities,” he said.

“By using this type of mobile connectivity we can reduce our revenue costs without any detrimental impact on the services we provide to patients.”

Shropshire will invite bidders to a competitive dialogue with a minimum of three bidders and requests to tender are due by 30 August.

The initial contract will be for five years plus with an option to extend for another two years on a year by year basis.

Crookes said the trust hoped to award a contract by May 2014 and begin the implementation process in June 2014.

“We are allowing a maximum of 21 months (March 2016) for the project implementation,” he said.